True Crime #17

Glass was everywhere, and the Playstation 3 was gone.

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Martha Nunez lost her husband in a car wreck caused by a drunk driver seven years ago. Suddenly becoming a single mother was a crushing experience. However, she eventually remarried, and added more children to her family — now two boys and two girls. Her husband is often away from the home as part of his job, and Nunez does her best to take care of her children.

Relatives help out, including her sister-in-law, who lives in another small home located in the rear of the family’s property. Nunez had taken her 2-year-old there for a few hours. While they were visiting, a burglar seized the opportunity, smashing in the side glass door and making off with her teenage son’s Playstation 3 and games.

“We’re still waiting on police to come do fingerprints,” she said. “We were on the property, but did not see the burglary.”

The games were a Christmas present to her teenage son, who has had a tough time adjusting to his father’s death.

“He’s pretty upset,” Nunez says. “He’s taking it real hard.”

The Nunez family estimates it will cost them $1,000 to replace the game system and the broken door. Because the game system was targeted and other electronics left untouched, family members have begun to suspect it might have been an acquaintance of her son from high school.

Despite the break-in, Nunez is happy no one was injured and she was not at home at the time with her baby.

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“The 2-year-old’s always playing in that room,” she says of where the burglars entered. “What if I had been in there by myself with the baby?”

Dallas Police Deputy Chief Rick Watson of the Southwest Patrol Division says because of the circumstances of this case, the family’s instincts of an acquaintance breaking in the home may be valid.

“That’s very plausible if that’s the only thing taken,” he says of the game system being taken.

In these types of crimes, it may be easier to find a suspect, he says, if the family has an idea who may be responsible. Sliding glass doors like the ones in the Nunez home are also a target for crooks.

“They’re easy to go into and more susceptible to entry, making it easy for a criminal.” —SEAN CHAFFIN